Sadly, soon all little ones begin to figure out the logistics in making, storing, and delivering all those presents is impossible for Santa to pull off. One of the most ponderous factors is where does he keep all those gifts nice and safe and stored in the North Pole?
A self storage blog, Storage.co.uk, took on the comical task of analyzing whether Santa could manage and afford to keep all the gifts for good boys and girls hidden in storage facilities across the globe. They kept in mind that Santa handles billions of presents each year and needs a low-profile place to keep them. Using strategic locations around the world, Santa could enlist storage facilities and enjoy the large loading bays to land his sleigh and reindeer.
According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), there are an estimated 2.2 billion people under the age of 18 living in the world. That’s a lot of presents to store. Granted, some children receive just a lump of coal, according to legend, bringing that number down a bit. But for estimation’s sake the number of 2.2 million will be used to see how much space Santa needs and at what cost.
Toys are different sizes, but if averaged out to the size of a Barbie doll or a Mr. Potato Head the math can be done. Each gift has the volume of about 2955 cm. If multiplied by 2.2 billion children on earth, the total volume of presents Santa has to store for Christmas would be about 229, 580, 648 cubic feet or 32.8 million sq. ft. If one considers the typical storage unit being around 7’ high with an area of about 100 sq. ft. that converts to 700 cubic feet volume for each unit.
The math Santa would face in figuring out how many storage units to rent would take a lot of help from some mathematically-savvy elves. So if Santa wanted to rent 100 sq. ft.-sized self storage units to store the presents, he’d have to divide 229,580,648 by 700. The resulting number would be the amount of units he’d have to rent: 327,972.
Everyone dreads moving. And it’s likely no fun for Santa either. Hopefully he would have a lot of buddies to help him move the toys into the thousands of storage units. That’s a lot of preparation to do on the sly. St. Nick is also a very old man, estimated to be 16 centuries old likely would tire quickly under the strain of moving and storing all of those toys across the planet. And those elves might make nice toys, but moving doesn’t seem to be one of their talents. Not as witnessed in any Rudolph or Frosty the Snowman movies, anyway.
Could Santa afford this storage luxury which would make his job so much more manageable? The sq. ft. floor area of all these needed storage units would be 32,797,200 sq. ft. because each one is 100 sq. ft. in these estimations. If Father Christmas was a planner and kept the gifts stored six months before Christmas, he would be handed bills totaling 677 million.
For all Santa does for us and our children to bring Christmas cheer, perhaps storage facilities throughout the world would pull together and give him storage time for free, or at least at a discount. Using storage units is a good idea for Santa and would make his job much easier. It’s interesting that some in the storage community recognized this practical yet comical option for the old man up north. Maybe there’s a bit of Christmas innocence left in us all that believes in him and wants to help – especially when it comes to storage.
Source Used:
“Does Father Christmas Use Self Storage?” Storage.CO.UK. Dec. 23, 2010.